Health

Health and healthcare are at the forefront of disability rights issues. In these pieces, you’ll find insights on topics ranging from insurance and the need for systemic change within medical institutions, to the importance of self-care for your physical and mental well-being.

A gray-toned photo of a person hunched over.

My Family’s Normalization of Pain Made Me Believe I Wasn’t Strong

My three little toes on the outer sides of my feet curl inward so that when I walk I sometimes step on them. They look like calloused half moons. The skin is red and blistered. My body has adapted to…

Disabled People Deserve Better Access to Care for Eating Disorder Recovery

The first time in what was already a decade-long experience of anorexia that someone was willing to admit I had other disabilities, I was twenty years old. I was told I would be best served in an institution due to …

artistic splatter illustration of a person swimming

Showing Up in Public in a Disabled Trans Body

The first time I limped out of the men’s locker room and into the YMCA indoor swimming pool area without a rash guard covering my surgery-scarred chest, I felt queasy. I was certain it would turn into an 80’s high…

A chart with drawings of different body parts highlighted with red circles to indicate pain.

My Knowledge of My Body is Often Ignored When I Seek Medical Care

I walk through the doors behind the front desk of the pain clinic to room number four, the white-walled, two-chaired, one-tabled examination room that looks identical to the room I was in the last time I was here. I fill …

A cup of tea and pot of honey, a notebook and pen, and a blanket resting artfully on a bed, indicating relaxation.

Slowing Down and Embracing Surgical Recovery is Still Living

I am working through one of those once a half-decade-or-so massive health shifts that folks with any chronic condition may find familiar: a rapid shift in function, surgery to implant more metal bits in me that set off alarms whenever…

A graduation cap on a pile of American coins.

Here’s Why Student Loan Debt is a Disability Rights Issue

When Cara Liebowitz graduated from the City University of New York School of Professional Studies in 2016 with her MA in Disability Studies, she was already on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) so she found it surprisingly easy to have her …

Campaigners protest against raids on sex workers in London

Sex Work is a Disability Issue. So Why Doesn’t the Disability Community Recognize That?

Sex workers face enormous risks of violence both from the police and from clients, and they are about to face more.

A maze made out of U.S. $100 bills on a blue background.

For Disabled People, the Path to Employment is Still a Maze

Luck, an unusually high tolerance for throwing myself into the disquieting unknown, and a measure of family privilege have allowed me to forge a path through the working world that is best described as an erratic squiggle. A long arch…

Image of a calendar with the words "get flu shot" written down in the box for the 20th. There is a red push pin on top of it.

Get Your Flu Shot. You Could Save the Life of a Disabled Person.

“Oh, I never get the flu shot. It makes me sick,” a woman tells me at a dinner party, with the sort of shattering confidence that only ignorance can provide. I am, for a moment, taken aback — and living…